Escape From Capitalism: Clara Mattei Seeks Transcendence

By Chris Green

July 2, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

In recent years, the news media has often reported polls suggesting that majorities of segments of the American population–for example, Democrat voters or young adults–”prefer” socialism to capitalism. It is not completely clear how these poll respondents define the term “socialism”–but it seems likely that most envision the word to mean a capitalism subjected to substantial government regulation in the interest of the common good and heavy taxation on business and the wealthy to provide a generous welfare state. In other words a socialism of the sort advocated by Bernie Sanders.

Of course, there have been a long line of famous thinkers and activists whose socialist visions have been much more radical: persons like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Emma Goldman have called for the complete abolition of the capitalist system of private property and exploitative wage labor and their replacement by an economic system that produces commodities based on peoples’ needs rather than capitalist profit. 

The Marxists Lenin and Trotsky led history’s first anti-capitalist revolution: Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This revolution featured soldiers and workers across Russia establishing soviets (workers’ councils) with the goal of  expropriating Russia’s economic enterprises from their owners and handing them over to the democratic control of the enterprises’ workers. 

The Bolshevik party led by Lenin and Trotsky gained the support of Russia’s workers by promising to support worker control of industry through the soviets. However, soon after they assumed power, they crushed the soviets, reducing them to mere rubber stamp bodies and established what became a notorious totalitarian dictatorship: the Soviet Union. 

The Bolsheviks justified their dictatorship on national security grounds: they needed to centralize power in their own hands in order to defend their revolution from the subversion of the western imperialist powers which were backing the civil war launched against the Bolsheviks  by Czarist remnants and Russia’s bourgeoisie.  

This article does not intend to offer a full assessment of the justice ( or lack thereof) of Bolshevik actions under the circumstances they faced.  Suffice it to note that by the early 1920s, as Isaac Deutscher wrote in his magisterial biography of Trotsky: “if the Bolsheviks had permitted free elections to the soviets, they would have certainly been swept from power.” 

As Deutscher (an admirer of Trotsky) explained it, the Bolesheviks felt justified in holding power against the wishes of the vast majority of Russia’s population. For one, most of that population were illiterate peasants of extremely low culture. The peasants were so backward that they might support a return to Czarist feudalism. In the 1920s,  in Deutscher’s words, Trotsky conceived of the Bolshevik dictatorship as a “trusteeship” for the Russian people who would be eventually granted more democratic freedom once it was determined they had reached a sufficient level of civilization. 

The Bolsheviks saw themselves as the only progressive force in Russia, whose dictatorship was a thin line standing between the well-being of Russia’s masses and a return to power of monstrously oppressive czarist feudalism. Deutscher conceded that, among the Bolsheviks’ anti-capitalist rivals, “anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists…seemed far more popular” than the Bolsheviks among Russia’s working class. But Deutscher claimed that they had no coherent political program or organization with which to advance their ideas; in any case, the Bolsheviks were determined to keep them far away from political power. 

Escape from Capitalism 

Persons wishing to discredit communism or other forms of anti-capitalism often point to the failure of the Soviet Union. Indeed, for the most part, there was not much admirable about the USSR. It was a giant prison camp with good welfare benefits, as Noam Chomsky once put it. 

However a new book by a prominent academic does a credible job in attempting to rejuvenate the anti-capitalist ethos. In Escape From Capitalism: An Intervention, Clara Mattei, a Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa, seeks to revive the spirit of democratic control of workplaces present at the outset of the Bolshevik revolution. She clearly seeks to transcend a definition of anti-capitalism that is limited by the experiences of “actually existing” communist societies like the USSR, Mao’s China or Castro’s Cuba: in fact her book has virtually nothing to say about such regimes except to note that they prominently featured the economic inequality and exploitation anti-capitalist revolution is supposed to transcend. 

Her previous book–The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the way to Fascism–focused in part on what seems to be her primary anti-capitalist lodestar: the so-called Red Biennium in her native Italy of 1919-20 when workers seized control of factories and peasants seized control of agricultural land in an effort to establish democratically run workplaces. The Capital Order–which was listed by the Financial Times as among its 10 best books of 2022–describes how Mussolini came to power with the support of Italy’s ruling class as an attempt to put down this anti-capitalist movement. 

Escape From Capitalism covers some of the same ground as The Capital Order: not just the 

Red Biennium but a favorite theme of the author: how professional economists see themselves as an elite class possessed of specialized knowledge who, ensconced in central banks and treasury departments in the US and around the world, exercise the levers of fiscal and monetary policy in order to maximize the conditions for capital accumulation.  This maximization of conditions for capital accumulation usually takes the form of fiscal and monetary austerity: the repression of union organization, the slashing of government spending on social welfare, deregulation, privatization of government assets and higher interest rates. Her description of how these professional economists, in post-World War I Europe and in the present day United States, see themselves as implementing policy for the well being of the masses (but without any democratic input from said masses) had echoes for me in Trotsky’s concept (in Isaac Deutscher’s words) of the Bolshevik Party’s “trusteeship” on behalf of the Russian masses. 

In the last part of the book, the author gives modern day examples of people around the world trying to advance models of economic development that replace capitalist exploitation with worker cooperation–but what is most interesting is her account of her personal activism in this vein:

“In my own efforts, here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (FREE), we hold monthly discussions with citizens from all walks of life to connect our daily problems to the economic structures that create them and envisage courageous alternatives. The Forum is structured as a council and is the product of a collective endeavor to spread economic knowledge, both locally and internationally, that fortifies the organization of effective systems of economic solidarity. It connects existing realities on the ground, such as Cooperation Tulsa, which, inspired by Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, collectively owns and organizes the production and distribution of food in a peripheral urban setting, and the Really Really Free Market, which organizes the exchange of essential goods without the intermediation of money. The path toward concrete transformation begins with real transformation and conversation.” 

Much of Escape from Capitalism contains useful statistics proving that capitalism is bad: for example that a majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and much of the world is impoverished and starving as a result of free market economics. She argues that starvation and misery in the third world is rooted in exploitation and robbery by advanced industrial powers: she devotes an interesting section on this theme to the case of Palestinian immiseration by Israel. 

It is not news to radical leftists of course, that capitalism is bad or that western imperialism has preyed on the Third World. But her combination of statistics proving capitalism’s perfidy and real world models that suggest ways of beginning to transcend it makes for an effective presentation of her viewpoint. 

 From the Street to the Picket Line

By Kurt Stand

July 2, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

John Hartnup - Union Yes. Flickr.

Review of Phil Cohn’s Maximum Leverage

Union strength or weakness is often seen only through the light of a strike or lockout. Phil Cohn’s memoir, Maximum Leverage, tells a different story. Union building is on-going, from organizing to win a first contract, to maintaining and strengthening that contract over time, from grievance handling to arbitration, from safety and health to pension rights. And in every situation there is a need to build membership participation, develop and support local leadership, strengthen mutual support, ensure understanding of rights, understanding of power and how to wield it (or lose it). Cohn demonstrates as much as he explains, how every aspect of the above is at the heart of a union’s ability to improve conditions on the job, improve pay and benefits, and ultimately be able to win on the picket line if it comes to that.

A chapter recalling fighting back against a union-busting attorney during bargaining is emblematic. BTR Sealing Systems in Reidsville, NC – a factory making wiper blades for auto companies – negotiated a first contract with workers after the plant was organized in 1995. Frequent grievances and conflicts with supervisors were part of the reality where both workers and frontline supervisors were unfamiliar with negotiating day-to-day disputes via a contract; nonetheless, eventually issued were resolved and a working relationship developed between the union and the company.

The developing good workplace environment turned poisonous when the second contract came up and management’s proposal included eliminating the union’s right to file NLRB or discrimination charges, eliminating past practice as an argument during a grievance procedure, requiring the union to resign all members at the end of each calendar year, amongst other poison pill provisions. Complicating matters, some union members were pushing for wage demands beyond what the union could win or the company could pay. For Cohn this meant waging a no-holds-barred campaign against management while educating the membership about what would or would not be possible to achieve. He makes clear, too, that while compromises are necessary in any battle, these ought not compromise rights or unity, and that while maintaining a good relationship with managers can be helpful, but members interests and needs always must come first.

Key in all of this, however, was aggressively resisting management’s assaults, winning improvements in conditions, pay, benefits wherever there was an opening, while all the while maintaining workplace unity. As Cohn tells a manager who wants him to support an inadequate contract, “One thing you’ve got to understand about me. My goal isn’t to ratify by fifty percent plus one. I’ve got good instincts about a local’s threshold. If I don’t sense a nearly unanimous ratification, I’ll get out in front of the militants and recommend the contract be voted down. A split vote means a divided local for the next three years. I’d rather walk a picket line.” Ultimately, none of the company’s anti-union proposals were in the final contract, the union won some wage gains and improved contract language – and strengthened the local’s in-plant leadership.

Similarly, Cohn describes the strategy he employed in 1998 engaging a vastly different workforce when winning a first contract with newly organized Starlite Bedding (a company manufacturing mattresses) in Greensboro, North Carolina and again when resisting a decertification attempt at a Kmart distribution center (also in Greensboro) in 2002. Other fights he recounts address potential layoffs/threatened closure at a textile mill in White Oak, NC; overcoming KKK influence at a foam manufacturing plant in Cornelius, NC; resisting concessions at a large clothing manufacturer in Philadelphia.

Yet his memoir is not just a recitation of war stories. When describing how he successfully defended a warehouse worker unfairly fired, Cohn explains the difference between non-union “employment-at-will” and union contract “just cause” protections. So too in a chapter on helping a worker at a textile mill (making carpets) get compensation for a workplace injury, he explains how employers try to get around fairly paying workers’ compensation claims.

Although each situation is different, each situation similarly involves total awareness of the personalities and economics involved, each situation requires judgement of how to involve local communities, media, utilize union legal and research resources. Cohn’s approach, even when holding a seemingly weak hand, is to go on the offensive while maintaining realism about objective, while never losing sight of the goal – be it a good contract, saving pensions, ensuring workplace safety.

There are good books that explain how unions function, that discuss the role of the NLRB or OSHA, that discuss labor strategy and cite examples of what has or has not worked in the past. What gives Cohn’s book a substance most “how to” or theoretical accounts lack, is that he is writing about his own experience, giving names and faces to vivid personalities with all their quirks and contradictions that is the living reality of a union. Thus readers see the range of experiences that embodies labor organization, in a way no textbook can provide.

One lesson that comes through always be aggressive on behalf of the membership – even (or especially) when under attack. Union building for Cohn is rooted in understanding points of strength and weakness on both sides, thereby discovering where the union has “maximum leverage”. His own life experience informed his practical and moral understanding of where the difference between the boss and workers lies:

“Management investigations tend to be little more than an exercise in rubber-stamping previously made decisions. They seldom take time to scratch beneath the surface of what appear to be straightforward incidents, in search of the whole truth. Employees are considered expendable and the impact on human beings and their families isn’t a corporate consideration.

“Human resource directors, even the few who actually give a damn, understand that keeping their job depends on maintaining levels of productivity that won’t tolerate distractions motivated by compassion or justice.”

Cohn became a union activist when working as a bus driver in Chapel Hill, NC, in the early 1980s at a facility where the workers were represented by a do-nothing local. Success there took him on the path to become a union rep for ACTWU (Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union) on through its various iterations as UNITE, UNITE HERE, and continuing into its current incarnation as Workers United-SEIU. From first to last (the final campaign noted in his memoir was in 2018) it was the culture and the militance of the southern textile workers that he embraced.

Life experience before moving South, however, prepared Cohn for the union organizing to come. On the streets of New York from 1967 (when he was 16) through the late 1970s, Cohn was part of New York’s East Village scene during a time when the counter-culture was collapsing into survival mode, where life was cheap in every sense of the word. During those years he frequently drove cabs which, in pre-gentrified times, was considered the most dangerous job around. He washed dishes, lived in and “managed” a hotel for people who fell through the porous cracks of the city. It is a world vividly described in the first section of Maximum Leverage — bringing to mind my own memories of those times and neighborhoods.

Being part of the world with people who were handed a bad deck, every day on the knife’s edge, set the framework for how Cohn approached unionism as he notes in the prologue: “I always had an instinct for survival and playing the system, sometimes using it to keep other street kids alive or out of prison … I had the soul of an outlaw but was never a criminal. An outlaw ignores the rules in favor of his own code but doesn’t prey upon the weak and innocent.”

Similarly, life where food, shelter, safety were always in question helped shape the convictions that made him a unionist — as he writes “Living on the fringes of society did far more to shape my views about social justice and how the system really works than any classroom could have.”

Maximum Leverage was published by Hardball Press and is available at https://www.hardballpress.org/Email

Kurt Stand

Kurt Stand has been a member of DSA since 1983, and has been long active in the labor movement in various capacities. He spent 15 years in federal custody and after his release, he worked as a bookseller for 10 years and then two years for Progressive Maryland focused on reentry issues. A Portside Moderator his articles have appeared in the Washington Socialist, Stansbury Forum, Socialism & Democracy, Socialist Project; The Bullet and elsewhere.

How Socialists Should Govern, Part 2

By The Last Farm

July 3, 2026

Source: The Last Farm

Image by Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is based in Detroit’s North End community

In the first part of this series, I discussed in theoretical terms how an elected socialist can use the capitalist state to advance socialism. In this second part, I’ll begin offering a series of concrete proposals, using New York City as an example.

Let’s review the criteria for assessing whether a left government is advancing socialism according to Erik Olin Wright in his conclusion to “Class, Crisis, & The State”:

1. Have welfare and social benefits expanded or contracted?
2. Have capitalism’s fundamental interests been prioritized in policy making?
3. Has the state’s direct role in the economy increased or decreased?
4. Has the bureaucracy been remade in the service of the working class and brought into the Left political coalition?
5. Has left political organizing been repressed or granted greater space to operate?
6. Has grassroots democracy and working class mobilization expanded or contracted?
7. Have reactionary elements within the military/police been weakened and socialist forces empowered?

Policy proposals

So, what could the mayor of a big city–someone like Zohran Mamdani–realistically do that would satisfy Wright’s criteria? Which reforms can he make that are non-reformist in nature? What can he accomplish with the power he has and the political obstacles he faces?

Here are my proposals:

1. Build the worker co-op sector
2. Decommodify the food shed
3. Create participatory assemblies
4. Advance library socialism
5. Wage war on cars
6. Leverage emergency powers
7. Start a repair network
8. Establish City Corps
9. Mandate public logistics

In this post, I’ll run through the first three of these, with the rest to come in later installments in this series.

Build the worker cooperative sector

Worker-owned cooperatives are businesses owned and democratically governed by their worker members. NYC has provided a small amount of funding to the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative since 2014, which provides technical support to co-ops (around 80 each year). It’s a fine initiative, but how could a socialist mayor push it further, much further?

First, by ramping up funding for the initiative so that there’s sufficient technical expertise to support growth in the sector. Then, by juicing that growth with a city procurement directive that gives preference for municipal contracts to be awarded to worker co-ops (in NYC, this could be done entirely at the mayor’s discretion.) The city could also create a revolving loan fund to facilitate worker co-op start-ups and conversions, ensuring access to capital. It could add co-op training to existing workforce development programs and K-12 education. It could add a lease preference for worker co-ops at city-owned properties and redevelopment sites (also entirely at the mayor’s discretion.) And in the private sector, it could require that workers have the right of first refusal to convert failing or relocating businesses to worker co-ops. Additionally, the city could target specific sectors for worker co-op start-ups, such as platform co-ops in the exploitative gig economy, later using its lawmaking power to grant them a competitive advantage or even a monopoly on things like ride-sharing and food delivery.

These measures could create guaranteed demand for worker co-ops while easing the hurdles to their development. Any expansion of worker co-ops means shifting some control of capital to the working class, thus advancing democratic socialism in the economy.

Decommodify the food shed

Mamdani ran on a promise to open one city-owned grocery store in each borough, a good idea that he sadly gutted in office (he is now proposing publicly-subsidized, privately-owned and operated grocery stores with the city acting as landlord and developer.) But even if he had stuck to his original plan, the mayor could deliver far more bang for his buck by creating a municipal buyer cooperative instead, beginning with the city’s public housing residents.

A food buyer cooperative is a group that pools their purchasing power to regularly order wholesale food for delivery. In a city like New York, such groups could be organized by the municipal government in NYCHA buildings or blocs, with members opting-in to select what foods to order and how much. Such cooperatives provide much steeper discounts than brick-and-mortar grocery stores due to low overhead and a simplified distribution chain.

The city could maximize these benefits by leveraging existing city-owned infrastructure–like warehouse space and trucking–combined with its massive purchasing power. The buyer’s club model avoids the very high capital costs of developing grocery stores (currently estimated at $70 million in NYC), plus the enormous on-going expenses of staffing and running large retail businesses. All of those savings are then passed on to members, turning the 5-15% discount offered by a city-owned grocery store into a 35-40% discount for buyer co-op members.

The democratic governance of a buyers club has the dual benefit of reducing food waste (nothing expires on the shelf), while shifting control over food to the working class, training its members to become protagonists in their own subsistence, rather than passive consumers. And such a program could get off the ground with only the mayor’s directive, no city council or state legislature needed.

If successful, the mayor could expand the cooperative beyond the confines of NYCHA and begin the process of vertical integration. The next logical step would be to create a city-owned food wholesaler, which would not only serve the buyers’ cooperative but food buyers throughout the city, both public and private. This could have the effect of reducing the cost of staple goods citywide, while offering 50-60% discounts to cooperative members.

Combine that with seeding worker co-ops in the food processing industry–again, utilizing existing city infrastructure, like public school kitchens after hours–and a direct farm procurement program, and you start to see the transformative potential here, in addition to the cost savings.

Create participatory assemblies

Remaking state bureaucracy in the service of the working class goes beyond appointing socialist functionaries. It requires entrenching the working class in the very structure of government so it can continually advocate for its own interests. This requires democratizing the decision-making of municipal departments.

A logical place to start would be social services client assemblies. Since the welfare state serves the working class, the working class should have decision-making power over how it operates. People who use public social services, like housing assistance, childcare, disability services, and workforce training programs would form democratic bodies–elected or chosen through a lottery–to shape how services are delivered.

The assemblies would have a say in how public agencies interact with and deliver benefits to their clients, not just via tedious surveys, but by directly voting on budget priorities, evaluating agency performance, and participating in hiring senior leadership. The application process for services would be shaped by clients, as would the on-going features of service.

This would have dual the benefit of improving agency performance while empowering the working class to assert authority over a critical state function. When state agencies are required to not just consult their constituents but to gain their vote, the balance of power shifts from the bourgeois state to the working class. Such a shift is necessary to win socialism, and it can begin right away.

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This article was originally published by The Last Farm; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

Colombia: in the eye of the storm

Friday 3 July 2026, by Jean Batou, Rodrigo Granda

Marx21 conducted this exclusive interview with Rodrigo Granda on June 20, 2026, on the eve of the second round of the Colombian presidential elections. Granda is a former member of the International Commission of the FARC-EP guerilla organisation who was kidnapped in Venezuela in 2004 by the Colombian secret services, helped by elements of the Venezuelan police, then smuggled to Colombia, where he was imprisoned. He was released in 2007 following a prisoner exchange between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP. Subsequently, from 2012 to 2016, in Oslo and then in Havana, Granda played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the Peace Agreement between the Colombian state and the guerrillas. Since then, he has remained engaged in the process of political transition of his demobilized organization, which now bears the name Comunes. The interview was conducted by Jean Batou. [1]

*****

How do you analyse the surprising success of the far-right candidate Abelardo De la Espriella in the first round of the Colombian presidential election, which was held on 31 May? How can we explain the crisis of Uribismo, the low score of its candidate and the ongoing recomposition of the Colombian far right?

Almost no one in Colombia expected a victory for the candidate Abelardo de la Espriella in the first round, on May 31. He was able to capture the political zeitgeist within large sectors that were bitter enemies of the peace process and opposed the policy of change proposed by President Petro. Similarly, some of these sectors have felt “aggrieved” — and I say this in quotation marks — by his policies of change. It is mainly the petty and middle bourgeoisie and, of course, the large groups of economic power in Colombia.

20 June 2026

Translated by International Viewpoint from Marx21.ch.

In addition, De la Espriella has been financed, supported and aided by mafia groups. Let us remember that he has always been linked to these circles and, to top it all off, is supported by the Latin American and global far right, including the United States government.

This individual is a citizen of the United States; he also has Italian nationality, and has benefited from considerable funding for his campaign, as well as from the openness of the mass media, made available to him. In this way, he has managed to channel discontent with what they see as the continuation and deepening of the policy of reforms and changes defended by Iván Cepeda. They also resorted to fear, lies and anti-communism, which continues to exert great influence in Colombia.

What is your assessment of Gustavo Petro’s years in office, the successes and failures of his policies?

Gustavo Petro has succeeded in generating a great surge of motivation among the Colombian people, who have seen the arrival of a citizen who is able to interpret the needs for change of the moment. He came to power, also buoyed by the wave of the Havana peace agreement, which, if fully implemented, could have definitively changed the face of Colombia and restored dignity to life in the countryside, as well as to the poor and needy population of the country.

Gustavo Petro has managed to allocate more land to the poorest than the previous two presidents. We are talking about one and a half million hectares of land distributed during his term of office, mainly to indigenous and peasant organizations and, to a lesser extent, to ethnic organizations and female heads of households.

He has also managed to allocate 20,000 hectares of land to the signatories of the peace agreement, as well as to launch some free housing projects in some territorial zones, including 125 homes that will be handed over to their recipients on 24 June in the Georgina Ortiz territorial zone, in San Juan de Arama, in the department of Meta. These are some of the successes of his presidential term.

We can also add the regularization of the ownership of 2 million hectares of land and the progress made in the framework of a modern multipurpose cadastre. Similarly, in the area of social investment, we can note progress in the areas of education, the elderly (increase in pensions) and the minimum wage, which is due to increase by 23% from January 2026.

Similarly, and despite all the difficulties that persist in the field of health, he has succeeded in gradually removing those who, for many years, had taken over the system for private purposes, and in establishing a return to public management, beneficial to the disadvantaged.

In addition, Gustavo Petro has managed to change Colombia’s image in the world and to highlight issues as important as global warming, the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, the preservation of the environment and respect for human rights.

He has condemned Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza, opposed American foreign policy on many issues, and worked tirelessly for Latin American and Caribbean unity.

These are important aspects, to which we could add the fact that the country’s economy has grown, especially in the food production sector. In rural areas, it grew by 15%. He has also created a new climate in terms of the relationship with social movements.

The incidence of enforced disappearances and torture has also decreased; There has been an overall decrease in crimes and massacres, which does not mean that all regions of the country have benefited from this respite. There are regions where we cannot deny that violence persists and is spreading, but we obviously cannot ignore the progress of this government.

And what is your assessment of the failures of his policy?

Mistakes were made in the management of certain aspects, especially with regard to President Petro’s “total peace” policy, which was perceived by many as a failure on all fronts, because a large part of the funds obtained to finance the final Havana agreement was allocated to the policy of dialogue that the government wanted to carry out with other armed groups. groups that had not yet expressly signed a peace commitment.

In addition, the population has felt deeply aggrieved in these territories due to the upsurge in violence and the growing presence of groups that economically control large areas of the national territory. There is pressure, fear, a feeling of failure. All these situations have therefore allowed the far right to reorganise itself and De la Espriella to gain supporters.

This momentum has also been fostered by the global recomposition of the new order established following the operation against Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Then, by the intervention, the bombings and the assassination of the Iranian president. All these situations mean that the far right is experiencing a new boom in these sectors, and this was expressed in this direct vote in favour of the candidate De la Espriella.

To what extent has Petro been able to rely on popular mobilizations?

Gustavo Petro was able to rely very much on the support of the trade union movement, the indigenous movement and the popular movement to defend a large part of the reforms he carried out, because he had to face a hostile parliament. It should not be forgotten that he came to power also on the basis of alliances with part of the centre and even with certain sectors of the right, to whom he initially gave a place in the government, but this was an almost unavoidable step at the beginning of his term. Later, he realized that within the government itself, some people were working to sabotage the various development projects and achievements of his administration, a situation that still persists today, especially in the regions, in some ministries and in agencies of the Colombian state. In some of these areas, there has been a lack of people loyal to the government line.

The other element that has affected him a lot is the internal factors of corruption. He complained about it himself, because many of the people he trusted betrayed him. These are factors that, in one way or another, have also influenced the results of his term in office.

How do you explain the result of his successor, Iván Cepeda, who came second in the first round of the elections?

Iván Cepeda undoubtedly ran an admirable campaign, but unfortunately the team around him functioned as a kind of iron circle, almost impenetrable and too exclusive, which prevented a large number of people, especially those linked to the centre and certain sectors of the right, from voting for him.

He was accused of everything, resorting to defamation, slander and lies, fear, disinformation, and waging a counter-campaign focused on presenting him as a guerrilla, as a man who combines all forms of struggle, as a man who, if he came to power, could lead Colombia to communism and “Castro-Chavismo”. All this in a country that is deeply conservative and fearful of change.

To what do you attribute the climate of violence that reigns in the country, ten years after the signing of the 2016 agreements that led to the abandonment of the armed struggle by the FARC-EP fighters and the launch of a peace process?

Petro has always criticized the Havana peace agreement. He never appreciated it at its true value. He described it as a “little peace”. However, the truth is that in Havana, those of us who were there had pleaded for all the different guerrillas to be involved in the process, with the possibility of including several negotiating tables within the same process; in other words, we argued that simultaneous discussion tables could be opened with the ELN in order to reach agreements, but this idea did not come to fruition. The same was true for those who had been extradited to the United States and who still exercised, or exercise, influence over vast sectors linked to paramilitarism and illegal economies in our country.

In addition, in this context, Iván Cepeda went to the United States, with the authorization of the Colombian and American governments, to meet with the groups that held real power in Colombia from there, as is the case with Salvatore Mancuso and other paramilitary leaders. Cepeda was accompanied, at that time, by the former senator, now deceased, Piedad Córdoba, two people who fought for peace in this country. This peace was not achieved with them. In the end, it was with us that peace was concluded.

Petro then spoke of the demobilization of the ELN in three months. For example, Danilo Rueda, the High Commissioner for Peace at the time, even proposed to start talks, not only with the ELN, but also with ordinary criminals and other armed actors; This proposal turned out to be a real imbroglio, because discussions were initiated without each of these groups having been previously characterized: what did they represent? What did they have? What was their human composition? Their territorial influence? What strength did they have? And what was their political-ideological orientation?

As a result, these armed groups, strengthened by the status granted to them by the authorities, reorganized themselves on the ground, which was not difficult given the weakness of the state in these territories, places where it had never managed to establish itself through social investment, nor to implement the Havana Peace Agreement. And since some changes had already occurred since the time of the Duque government, this trend continued; the president then had the idea of dismantling the High Council for Peace in the country, and replaced it with an Implementation Unit, which had neither its own resources, nor specific political weight, nor functions with a real link to the whole process under way. Of course, this has weakened the entire architecture of the peace process.

Three years ago, during a visit to the Mesetas region of the Meta department, the president promised to re-establish the High Council for Peace, but this has not been possible so far, and it will not be possible in the short time he has left. [2]

Has the peace process been seriously compromised?

Of course, we can mention the non-compliance with the six points of the peace agreement, because this agreement can only work in its entirety. For example, the fight against drugs or illicit crops is directly linked to point 1, which refers to comprehensive rural reform; In other words, no point can be dissociated from the others.

Similarly, there are delays, among other things, in the implementation of territorial development plans, the initial structure of which envisaged that these investments would benefit entire regions through high-impact development plans aimed at bringing about change: creation of new communication routes, bridges, establishment of health, education and housing services. High-impact social investment plans that promote regional integration, benefiting Black, Indigenous and peasant communities, as well as female heads of households. And that, unfortunately, has not been realized.

This does not mean that everything has been a failure, but the objectives have not been achieved, the indicators have not been respected and the monitoring has been lacking; In addition, there is the rise in corruption and the pressure exerted by the groups that persist and have developed in Colombia in rural areas, which has led large sections of the population of these regions to live in a climate of uncertainty and disillusionment.

To take another example, in many areas, a thousand, two thousand, three thousand hectares of land were handed over to the communities, but no economic investment came to support their productive projects, because many of these investments exceeded 20,000 or 35,000 million pesos, and there was supposedly no money for these types of investments. These are situations that are still waiting for a response and that will certainly continue under the next government, whatever it may be.

It must be understood that the Havana peace agreement was not just a government policy, but a state policy, which also has legal repercussions, because Colombia has enshrined it in the constitutional body and, moreover, in a unilateral statement by Dr. Juan Manuel Santos before the United Nations.

This agreement also has the support of the international community and the original documents are kept in Switzerland as a special agreement, which means that the agreement must be respected; otherwise, it would have repercussions at the international level, particularly with regard to its application.

Unfortunately, at present, on a global scale, respect for treaties, territorial integrity and the sovereignty of peoples is experiencing a total deterioration, a perverse reversal due to the fact that those who are strong impose their conditions.

How do you explain the existence of FARC dissidents who have resumed the armed struggle? What do they represent? What does the ELN represent? What is your assessment of the transformation of the FARC into a political party under the name of Comunes?

I would say that there was no real dissent within the FARC to resume the armed struggle. Before the signing of the agreement, in 2016, we organized the national conference of guerrillas in the department of Meta, also in the Llanos del Yarí. All the former fronts, columns, companies and urban structures of the guerrilla organization were represented, and the draft agreement that we had reached in Havana with the government was unanimously adopted. Once this document was approved, it was signed between us as an agreement that the entire guerrilla organization had agreed upon; There were no dissenters, that is, no one stood up to express their disagreement. Among the guerrillas, support was unanimous.

At the end of the conference, the commanders returned to their home areas, where their camps were located, and that was where some dissented, but there were very few of them: people abandoned or betrayed the peace agreement they were signing at this time. Others were subjected to harassment and politically motivated schemes to obtain their extradition, orchestrated and manipulated by the then Attorney General, Néstor Humberto Martínez. This is the case of Óscar Montero, known as “El Paisa”, Jesús Santrich and Iván Márquez himself, who were forced to take up arms again.

It should be noted that at the moment, of the 14,000 guerrillas who signed the peace agreement, more than 95% of us are respecting the commitment made and the word given to the Colombian people. This is, let’s say, the highest number of guerrillas per capita who keep their word and respect the agreements, if we refer to the various agreements concluded between states and guerrillas around the world.

Similarly, it has been shown that we were the guerrilla organization that handed over the most weapons: 2.8 weapons per demobilized man. It was then that other types of groupings appeared, which are no longer based on the ideological, political and programmatic principles of the guerrillas born in the 60s, but which are made up of people using the name “guerrilla” for economic purposes, for their personal profit, and who erect money as a god.

This phenomenon undoubtedly also affected the comrades or former comrades of the ELN; indeed, in many regions, both those who have defected from the peace process and the ELN are responsible for about 80 per cent of the assassinations committed against peace signatories.

It must be said that this experience, this transition from an armed movement to a political party, was quite interesting, even if it had already been done in El Salvador and Guatemala. In Colombia, the experience was different, since it was possible to recall the events that took place between the 1970s and the 1980s, when the political platform of the Patriotic Union was launched, which was born thanks to the agreements concluded at the time between the Colombian State and the FARC-EP. This platform had suffered the systematic elimination of its activists. This extermination has continued and extended; in addition, there was stigmatization from the president himself as well as from senior state or government officials.

This is particularly the case with the statements of the director of the National Protection Unit, Mr. Augusto Rodríguez, who publicly states that those of us who are part of the Comunes political party are, in fact, people who are “holding hostage” this entity of protection. In addition, the latter is trying to unilaterally introduce changes that are totally prohibited or that are not part of the Havana Peace Agreement.

These are very complex situations. Similarly, governments — I’m talking about three governments — all of whom systematically violated the Peace Agreement in one way or another, trying to change its letter and spirit and give it the interpretation they thought was correct. [3]

However, the Constitutional Court called on the state to rectify certain unconstitutional positions and shortcomings vis-à-vis the signatories to the peace; for example, in the area of security, where it does not respect its commitments. The Court issued a series of orders and set deadlines for the Petro government to remedy this. However, this was not possible, and here, it is like in colonial times: “we obey, but we do not apply”.

It has been a very unequal fight, which will continue, because we have just lost our legal status, which is a major political blow in view of the deaths, the assassinations, the lockdown, the threats and the displacement that we have suffered during these years of reintegration [4] But the important thing is that we do not lose our status as High Contracting Party to the final Havana Peace Agreement, which goes beyond the mere constitution of a political party or movement.

We reserve this status for actions of a legal nature, because there have been territories that we have not been able to enter to campaign, because we have been designated as a military target and where we have been denied the opportunity to be on an equal footing with other movements and political parties that exist in Colombia.

“”

Attached documents

• colombia-in-the-eye-of-the-storm_a9628.pdf (PDF - 1.5 MiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article9628]

Footnotes

[1] For a detailed account of his previous activity see Monthly Review Vol 59, No 10, 2008 “The Guerrilla in Colombia An Interview with Rodrigo Granda, Member of the FARC-EP International Commission”.

[2] The new president, elected on 21 June, will take office on 7 August.

[3] The three governments were, respectively, those of Juan Manuel Santos, 2016-2016; Iván Duque Márquez, 2018-2022; Gustavo Petro.

[4] The Peace Agreement provided for a transitional period, where the FARC party enjoyed 5 seats ex officio in both houses of parliament; In 2026, this system ended. However, Comunes did not obtain the quorum necessary to have parliamentary representation, which deprives it of its legal status as a recognized party.

Colombia

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• Jean Batou

  Jean Batou is a member of the leadership of SolidaritéS - an anticapitalist, feminist and ecologist movement for 21st century socialism - in Switzerland, and editor of their bimonthly solidaritéS. He is a professor of Contemporary International History at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous publications on the history of the globalization and social movements.

• Rodrigo Granda

  Granda is a former member of the International Commission of the FARC-EP guerilla organisation. From 2012 to 2016, in Oslo and then in Havana, Granda played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the Peace Agreement between the Colombian state and the guerrillas.